Apparently I am unreasonable. I certainly don’t think that I am, in fact, I think as a parent, I am extremely reasonable. My sixteen year old son is allowed to do a lot of things that I know some of his friends aren’t. He works hard at school, he is revising hard for his GCSEs this year and most of the time, he is really sensible. In return, I trust him to go out with his mates, he is allowed to go to sleepovers and parties and we allow him to drink alcohol, as long as he continues to be sensible about it.
That is reasonable isn’t it?
There has been a lot of talk about festivals this year. He is very keen to go to a festival with his mates. I get it. Lots of teens are into the festival thing during the summer. But as brilliant as festivals are, there are lots of things that go on at festivals that I am not sure I want my son to witness or experience at this age. He wanted to go to Reading Festival. I assumed that he meant for the day, so I wasn’t totally against the idea. Oh no, he wanted to go for the whole festival, with a group of friends and camp over for the real ‘festival experience.’
My husband and I discussed it at length and also consulted some of the other parents involved. The general consensus was that they were just a year or two too young. We suggested a compromise of maybe just going for one day, staying until late and getting the experience without the camping side. The response was not an impressed one. He is after all sixteen and very mature. I agreed with both of these statements but as in with all of these things, it is the other people I worry about. So, he begrudgingly agreed to just go for the day.
Suddenly, he started talking about going to Cornwall with some friends. He dropped it casually into the conversation and I was slightly surprised by the way he was talking about it as a definite thing. It turns out that he, two of his friends and group of girls wanted to go on their own for a week in Cornwall.
Erm, no, that ain’t happening.
This one has been the topic of much discussion and phrases like ‘treating me like a baby’ and ‘what is the worse that can happen’ have been bandied around. To be perfectly honest, I am not sure I want to think about what the worst that could happen would be.
Am I being unreasonable? I know that at 16, there are lots of things that you can legally do. But for me, I don’t think my sixteen year old is ready to go gallivanting around the country doing festivals and having holidays without a responsible adult with him in tow. I suggested that we could go to Cornwall as a family, wouldn’t that be nice? Apparently not, that would be the worst thing ever. In fact, his face lit up as he quickly suggested that we could all go away and leave him home alone for the week. Also, not happening.
This is a weird stage for teens I suppose. They are growing up and whilst I am all for taking responsibilities, I would like to see my teen have another year under his belt before he starts solo travelling. I don’t want to treat him like a baby and it isn’t a question of not trusring him. I don’t necessarily trust other people or that he would always make the right choice. That all comes with experience. Maybe I am being unreasonable?
Plus, I also think he might be better off thinking about getting a job once he has done his exams to finance all of these expensive travel plans of his and then next year we can talk again.
I’m with you! They are just a little bit too young. My son also wanted to go to Reading. Among his friendship group, two were definitely allowed to go and most definitely weren’t. I didn’t want him to go, but my husband would have allowed it. Luckily it isn’t happening as most of them aren’t allowed to go. Nobody has mentioned any trips to Cornwall yet, but I’m sure it would be a very similar situation with his friends’ parents.
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You’re not unreasonable at all. We live in an extremely dangerous world and teens don’t always have the experience needed to deal with unexpected situations. “The shrewd one sees the danger and conceals himself, but the inexperienced keep right on going and suffer the consequences.” (Proverbs 22:3)
He’ll get there but just a little more time is needed. It’s hard being a good parent sometimes but it’s always worth. He’ll understand when he has children of his own.
You aren’t being unreasonable at all in my opinion. My girl is 18 later this year and I would be reluctant to even let her go. Sometimes it’s other people I don’t trust more than my girl and that’s sometimes a bigger worry x
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